Untitled Woodcut World Map.
5 1/8 x 6 ¾ inches, Some text show-through, else fine with a bold strike. The earliest iteration of the so-called Daniel’s Dream Map, also known as the Wittenberg World Map. The dream embodied in the map is that of the fifth century B. C. prophet Daniel, who envisioned the fate of history’s great empires as personified by various beasts depicted on the map. This map appeared in Martin Luther’s 1530 Eine Heerpriedigt wider den Turcken, a pamphlet linking Turkish conquest of the west to Daniel’s apolcalyptic visions. Amongst the monsters appearing on the map is a mass of soldiers in western Asia, representing the Turkish armies then gathering just outside of Vienna. Luther and others reached deeply into the Bible to extract something that would restore hope by foreshadowing the eventual victory of Christendom.
* http://www.daniels-dream-map.com/index.htm Version 7, Block 1; cf. Shirley 65 (A).
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